The Science of “The Dress,” No Sign of a Syria Policy, and Trump’s Tax Reform Ignorance

The Trump Doctrine?: Donald Trump refuses to explain his Syria policy. William Saletan outlines the five different paths forward that he sees championed by various advisers as well as the implications those paths would have for American involvement in military conflicts.

More harm than good: Speaking recently about the border-adjusted corporate tax, Trump made it abundantly clear he does not understand the economics and politics of the most talked-about issue in the tax reform debate. This is bad news for the GOP, Jordan Weissmann writes. If Trump gets involved, the Republicans’ tax reform plans may go the same way as the ACA repeal.

“The dress” returns: You’ll probably remember the white-gold/black-blue dress that took over the internet in February 2015. Two years later, a vision scientist has answers for why people saw the dress differently—and it’s partly thanks to the citizen science of Slate readers!

A messy portrayal: S-Town is a beautiful podcast about a brilliant eccentric living in small-town Alabama. Its flaw, though, is its lack of queer knowledge, Daniel Schroeder writes. S-Town’s narrator Brian Reed was unable to ditch his tidy, straight idea of love when painting a portrait of a difficult queer life.

For fun: Watch the late-night hosts respond to the United Airlines PR fiasco.